Letters from Piety Hill
Russell KirkSword of the Romantic Imagination: Kirk and Bradbury
A vision of the Gothic, dieKleinert (alamy.com)A Kirkian Renaissance
No other major figure in 20th century American social and political life has deserved study more than Russell Amos Kirk (1918-1994). The existing studies of Kirk are excellent, but the latest effort, by Professor Brad Birzer, surpasses all previous attempts to appreciate the magnitude of Kirk’s personal mission and scholarly opus. Birzer has a command of the primary sources that is truly amazing, and his archival labors evince the work of a superior scholar and world-class historian. In other words, a significant advance in scholarly knowledge is upon us, as well as an advance in evaluating Kirk as a political thinker.[1]
An Alternative Southern Conservative Tradition
The Haygood-Hopkins Memorial Gateway at Emory UniversityStudents at the Oxford College of Emory University can spend their semester living in Haygood Hall. The college website describes the dormitory as the “smallest, most intimate community on campus” and is the closest student residence to the dining hall. It is also named after one of the most emphatic defenders of African American education and civil liberties in Georgia during the years after Reconstruction.
The Fertility God of Conservatism
It is hard to imagine what the world of a conservative intellectual looked like in 1953. In our present age of talk radio (led by Rush Limbaugh), Fox News, national conservative magazines and blogs, and the New York-D.C. axis of Right-leaning think tanks, we regard the conservative movement as ubiquitous—and inextricably linked to politics and public policy.
The Conservative Imagination of Russell Kirk: A Conversation with Brad Birzer
Brad Birzer comes to Liberty Law Talk to discuss his upcoming biography of Russell Kirk entitled Russell Kirk: American Conservative. Our discussion focuses on the nature of Kirk’s conservatism and his place on the American Right. For example, many have prominently argued that Kirk’s conservatism is only strangely American. Birzer’s answer to this question will give these critics much to think about. We also discuss the influence of Edmund Burke and T. S. Eliot on Kirk, and we consider just what he meant by his invocation of the terms Moral Imagination and the Permanent Things.
What Kind of Humanism Do We Need?
A recent study by the Pew Forum revealed in great detail what even casual observation makes plain: Americans, like their European counterparts, are increasingly less religious than they used to be. Moreover, religious diversity is on the rise. As Western culture becomes more secular and more religiously diverse, it is interesting to wonder what holds it together. Can secular conceptions of human meaning provide a sufficient foundation for social life and political affiliation? The challenge of modernity and liberalism specifically, at least beginning with Hobbes, has been how human beings who share little more than common fear and common natural…
The Right against America
Chief Justice John Roberts before the 2013 State of the Union Address (Joshua Roberts / Alamy Stock Photo).
Robert Nisbet was certainly a conservative theorist of some prominence, as Mike Rappaport indicates. Mike was picking up on Steve Hayward’s post, which called to task today’s “quantum conservatism” for its uncertainty principle. For good reason, Mike holds Nisbet as an exemplar of the differences between conservatives and libertarians. But like Tocqueville, whose insights his best work elaborated on, sociologist Nisbet overlooks the core of American politics, which is the Declaration of Independence. Unless conservatives are selective about what it is they are conserving, they are no better, theoretically, than the radicals they claim to be combating. And libertarians cannot claim to defend…
Russell Kirk’s Founders and the Unwritten Constitution
2013 is the 60th year since Regnery Publishing brought Russell Kirk's The Conservative Mind to the reading public. The book helped transform modern American politics and inform many emerging conservative minds. When I was interning in Washington, DC more than twenty years ago, I remember answering a question by saying that I had a skeletal conservatism only until I met the works of Russell Kirk who put flesh on those bones. Kirk's influence was similar to a generation before I was born whom he helped understand they were both conservative and just the latest in a long line of Anglo-Americans…
More Responses
In Gerald Russello’s account of Russell Kirk’s Constitutional theory, he conscisely outlines Kirk’s thought on that central concern for conservatives and indeed for all Americans. As Kirk understood, the Constitution is a great Fact of American experience, whose importance cannot be overlooked; and yet, as any historian could tell us, the trouble with facts is…
It is a great honor to be asked to comment on Gerald Russello’s excellent piece. A man whose scholarship and wisdom is as high as his integrity is deep, Russello has pioneered much in his own writing and editing and in his profound grasp of the law. Almost every topic I’ve explored academically has proudly…
Natural Law, Natural Rights, and the Law of Freedom
It is a great honor to be asked to comment on Gerald Russello’s excellent piece. A man whose scholarship and wisdom is as high as his integrity is deep, Russello has pioneered much in his own writing and editing and in his profound grasp of the law. Almost every topic I’ve explored academically has proudly followed the trails he has already cut and blazed. The Conservative Mind Sixty years ago, Russell Kirk (1918-1994) published his stunning and culturally and politically shattering work, his barely revised dissertation, The Conservative Mind. Knopf had accepted it but the prestigious publishing firm wanted the relatively young…
More Responses
In Gerald Russello’s account of Russell Kirk’s Constitutional theory, he conscisely outlines Kirk’s thought on that central concern for conservatives and indeed for all Americans. As Kirk understood, the Constitution is a great Fact of American experience, whose importance cannot be overlooked; and yet, as any historian could tell us, the trouble with facts is…
2013 is the 60th year since Regnery Publishing brought Russell Kirk's The Conservative Mind to the reading public. The book helped transform modern American politics and inform many emerging conservative minds. When I was interning in Washington, DC more than twenty years ago, I remember answering a question by saying that I had a skeletal…
